Seduced By Art, National Gallery

AlanOrgan posted a photo:

SEDUCED BY ART - Photography past and present

LOCATION: National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London (31 October 2012 – 20 January 2013)

VISIT DATE: 10 November 2012

Adult ticket: £12

A superb arrangement of flowers are pictured exploding; petals flying through the air like shards of multi coloured glass. It is a light jet print, mounted on aluminium called “Blow-Up: Untitled 5” (2007) by Ori Gersht. It is hung to the right of the painting which inspired it, a still life entitled “The Rosy Wealth of June” (1886) by Ignace-Henri-Theodore Fantin-Latour; a painting in which flowers beautifully spill from a vase in oil on canvas.

Though both are hung towards the end of this exhibition, their comparison sums up what the event is about; the telling of a story of how paintings have influenced photography both at its outset and with more recent contemporary photographers.

If you leave the exhibition cinema to the end, it’s story begins with the Romanticism movement oil painting “Death of Sardanapalus” (1827) by Delacroix. Modern contemporary photography which the painting has inspired follows on which includes work by Jeff Wall, Tom Hunter and Sarah Jones.

Wall’s “Destroyed Room” - a huge Cibachrome transparency in a light-box - is, at first look, a well lit studio tableaux of quite literally a destroyed room, but take one glance to your left at the Delacroix and it hits you with a kind of “ah I get it,” factor when your mind registers that they are cleverly the same. Same in layout, colouring and style, but wholly different with the Wall image being very unromantic with no people in it.

I’ve covered the work of Tom Hunter before having been to his exhibition at Warwick Arts Centre in 2011. He is a contemporary photographic artist who recreates the work of historical artists (including Pre-Raphaelite painters, Romanticists and playwrights) in photographs based in the modern settings in and around his adoptive home of Hackney. His 2009 C type print, “Death of Coltelli” is a reconstruction of one of the central figures from the Delacroix painting, leaning over a bed in true Hunter style in an East London bedroom. It is difficult to comprehend that this image was shot using film and not via digital recording techniques when you examine the amazing tonal range in this image, which sweep from the pinky whites of the woman’s skin to the darkness of the edges of nearby furniture.

The exhibition moves on from room to room of the basement section of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, covering portraiture, the human figure, tableaux, still life, landscapes and three short films. Though I doubt he thought of it at the time, Martin Parr’s “Signs of the Times” (1991) is delightfully compared alongside Gainsborough’s “Mr and Mrs Andrews”. Both are essentially new couples in their new homes and it is pointed out that Parr has delayed taking his photograph until they have become self conscious, thus deliberately creating rigid postures, showing discomfort.

In the portrait section a loose attempt is seemed to be made to link a whole plethora of photographic portraiture to the painting of Anthony van Dyck. Amongst some other splendid works a compare is made between a photograph called “Calliope” (1989) by Maud Sulter and the much more famous portrait of Sarah Bernhardt by the great Paris portrait photographer Nadar (only a small reference picture of the Nadar work is shown). A clear influence can be seen here, but, of course, both works are photographs.

Comparison of the human figure in painting and photography would not be complete without one of Rineke Dijkstra’s beach photographs and the obvious influence of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”. The Dijkstra image shown is a C-type print “Kolobrzeg, Poland, July 26 1992”. Even the National Gallery could not, however, get hold of the Botticelli and a small reference picture is shown.

This exhibition positively spoils the viewer with other works by the likes of Oscar Rejlander, Roger Fenton, Gustav Le Gray, Edweard Muybridge, Karen Knorr, Richard Learoyd, Thomas Struth, Richard Billingham, Nan Goldin, Coventry’s John Blakemore (Coventry being my home city) and others.

In the cinema area, I particularly enjoyed “Big Bang 2” which is another work by Gersht. We see what appears to be a painting very similar to the oil painting “Hollyhocks and Other Flowers in a Vase” by Jan van Huysum. The image at first appears two dimensional until it suddenly explodes!

I also enjoyed the film entitled “An Ode to Hill and Adamson” (Masie Broadhead and Jack Cole 2012) where in a three minute movie, a set is built in which a living portrait is created within a frame with a woman posing in the style of a nineteenth century photograph by Hill and Adamson.

Although I (unlike some critics), with open arms, welcome the National Gallery finally accepting photography on to its walls, the story this exhibition tells is, however, from a narrow viewpoint. Firstly I didn’t see a single mention or acceptance of photography being art (though the wonderful accompanying book that I purchased absolutely does), merely referring to (in the tableaux section) it as a ‘mechanical medium’. And, whist the walls show off the works of Pictorialist movement photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron there seems to be no mention of the actual word “Pictorialism” or any criticism of the late nineteenth century movement that in fact held the development of art photography back, by keeping it associated totally with painting techniques.

Modernism, Surrealism, and work from outside the edges of Europe barely get a mention; probably because they all contain some great examples which have truly developed photography as an independent art medium. There is a little Americana, but only enough to support the story being told. Also missing are examples where photography has indeed influenced painting.

It would have been nice to see something like “Bal Au Moulin de la Galette” (1876) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir - a good example of a painting influenced by photography, where brushstrokes depict movement and elements around the edge of the picture only partly appear in the frame.

The exhibition’s story aside, and forgetting the Luddites who still might fail to recognise photography as an art medium, this is a chance to see some amazing photographic art; my favourite being the image I began with - Gersht’s “Blow-Up: Untitled5”. The flowers were frozen with liquid nitrogen and arranged with hidden explosive charges; the explosion captured using a high speed digital camera. The picture’s semiotic content includes the powerful showing of red, white and blue petals, the colours of the French flag, the native country of the inspiring Latour, plus the explosion itself, Gersht’s outpouring of his feelings on terrorism and war from experiences in his native Israel.

At the end of the day though, in life, everything we see influences everything that we do; whether that be consciously or subconsciously. Art is no different, whatever the medium. Any kind of artistic image(s) whether it be two dimensional, three dimensional, still or moving can influence another. Welcome to the 21st century National Gallery and please don’t listen too much to those dinosaur critics, such as Brian Sewell, who have slammed you for putting on this show.

Original post
wrinkle cream